Prehistoric Hair Suggests 1st Eskimos Came From Asia

"There would have been populations all the way from Alaska to Greenland, but then the whole thing vanishes and another lot come in," Gilbert said. "A separate, new migration gave rise to the current Inuit."

"Obviously it's an extremely tough environment up there, and it may be that the environments got so harsh that the populations got smaller and smaller and collapsed," he said.

Forster agreed, adding that the disappearance of Greenland's Paleo-Eskimos coincided with a cooling event that reached its peak 2,800 years ago.

Likewise a later cooling episode known as the little ice age, which lasted from A.D. 1350 to 1850, is credited with wiping out any modern genetic trace of Greenland's first European settlers—the Vikings, Forster noted.